Jonah Numbers

I finally listened to Endless. Well, really I finally bought Apple Music. But that inspired me to listen to Frank Ocean's Apple Music exclusive album Endless. I want to talk more about this album in a future review but for now, I want to shine a spotlight on one song in particular, Alabama.

This song starts with overlapping vocals. They feel like thoughts racing through a busy mind. The way his rhyme schemes continue in the background almost like an echo while he changes flows is so beautiful. I love the repetitive beat behind the vocals. At first, it creates this feeling of uneasiness. As Frank's erratic vocals continue to rush past, the beat almost becomes a point of grounding for the listener and feels oddly comforting. Side note it really reminds me of something from Tokyo Ghoul. This unease eventually morphs into a sense of longing with the outro of the song. He repeatedly asks questions about how he can improve and how he can "do better". The rushed overthinking and tense beat are a reflection of a sense of insecurity that is fully realized in the outro.

At least that's what I got out of the song. However you interpret it one thing is consistent, this dude needs to drop another album.

Go listen to Alabama and go listen to Endless. Even if you don't have Apple Music there are reuploads on YouTube.

Also, SAMPHA AND JAZMINE SULLIVAN ARE UNMATCHED

To keep this short. This is my favorite body of music this year. This year has been very weak for rap music—forgettable album after forgettable album. The last time we got a project worth discussing was Let's Start Here by Lil Yachty. This new album from Lil Uzi Vert shattered my expectations. I was expecting another poor attempt at a 2016 remake. I was expecting a lot of material with nothing to write home about. While there were definitely dry pockets on the album, I'd say as a whole this album was amazing and definitely one of my favorite projects from Lil Uzi.

Growing up I listened to a lot of Lil Wayne and Fall Out Boy. Eventually, when I got to 6th grade I discovered Lil Uzi Vert for the first time on Wiz Kalifa's song Pull Up. That prompted me to listen to the rest of their discography. For me, Lil Uzi was the perfect blend of everything I loved about music. Great beat selection with hard-hitting drums, fast passed flows that keep me engaged throughout a song, emotional vocals, and vulnerable lyrics. Early on my favorite song was Count Dem Rollz, I have distinct memories of blasting this song in my headphone in middle school. Later on, I absolutely fell in love with The Perfect Luv tape. When Love is Rage 2 came out I was in 8th grade and that solidified me as a Lil Uzi Fan.

This new Uzi album is everything I wanted and more. It was experimental while still distinctly Uzi.

• The first song eased us into Uzi's universe, luring us in with their older sound. It was familiar while still exciting due to its fantastic execution. I love how
• The second song "Suicide Doors" was quite honestly amazing. That was the song that pulled me into the album. If "Flooded the Face" was the wind up "Suicide Doors" was the pitch, and it was a fucking homerun.
• "Aye" was lowkey disappointing. Generally, I hate it when Uzi changes aspects of a song going from a snippet to an official release (the bells on Myron) but the beat switch was a welcome addition to this song. Despite the great chorus, the song felt empty and Travis Scott didn't add much.
• "Crush Em" was simply phenomenal. I love the fast-paced delivery of the chorus. I love the reference to the Myron melody. I love that super melodic "skrr" adlib in the background. The beat switch alone had me on the floor from excitement. This was an amazing song.
• "Amped" was another very exciting song. The chorus got boring after a minute but Uzi's delivery towards the end of the end of the chorus and during their verse was so good. I love it when they extend the last word of each bar and play with their pitch like when they say "Trap life ain't that bad". That part alone scratches a part of my brain.
• The beat on "x2" was crazy. Ken Carson did his thing. Uzi's first verse was pretty boring although it was very funny when they called out one of their fan pages. I love their falsetto on the bridge of the song. His second verse was a lot better, the deep voice and flow switches were nice. Also, I love the character building with Uzi being a Werewolf and Carti being a Vampire.
• I love the chorus of "Died and Came Back". Especially the first line "Ragatoni is not spaghetti", I think this line is hilarious. Also, I love spaghetti and I've eaten it almost every week since 6th grade. I also love the way Uzi delivers the chorus. The rest of the song isn't that eventful and I only listen to it for the chorus.
• "Spin Again" was just a vibe.
• "That Fiya" and "I Gotta" could have been left off the album. Uzi needs to permanently ban Brandon Finessin from entering their studio. He single-handedly produced the worst tracks on the album and honestly, I blame him for ruining Eternal Atake. Uzi was trying their hardest to save these songs, especially on "That Fiya" and still couldn't pull it off. This 2 track run was atrocious.
• "Endless Fashion" was a true gem of the album. I went into the song with meager expectations. When it comes to Uzi and Carti albums Nicki Minaj tends to ruin songs. I think Uzi perfectly executed the melody and I think Uzi and Nicki are the only rappers who could have pulled a song like this off. I especially love Uzi's first line of the chorus. One thing I don't like is Nicki referencing Karl Lagerfeld. Yes, I know he died and yes I know he was a fashion icon but he was also a huge asshole who promoted unhealthy body images which is especially distasteful when you look at the body images Nicki herself has promoted in her past. Nicki immediately makes up for this when she references Virgil Abloh saying "My niggas'll blow like Virgil, I got that duffel". Already it's a great double entendre comparing the "blow" of a gun to a different kind of blow. But it takes on a whole new layer when you look at Virgil Abloh's creative past. His first fashion house was called Pyrex. After some legal trouble, Virgil shifted to a new brand Off-White. The "Off-White" symbolizing the product of the "Pyrex". This all ties in very neatly with Nicki's bar, illustrating what may be inside Nicki's duffle. This was a great song and one of my favorites on the album. Also when Uzi said "I rock Junya on wannabes" they were referring to Junya Watanabe the Japanese fashion designer. I was hoping they said "wannabes" to set himself up for an Itzy reference since it's well-known Uzi loves K-Pop and Itzy loves their shoulder moves as much as Uzi but that never came.
• The melody on the chorus of "Momma, I'm Sorry" reminds me of Dax for some reason. The Cheif Keef reference is cool but the song overall is a miss for me.
• The first verse of "All Alone" wasn't that great but I liked the second verse. That Cheerio line is stuck in my head.
• The beat on "Nakamura" makes me slightly forgive Brandon Finessin. This song is truly anthemic. I love the high-energy beat and I love how Uzi hits the ground running with his first verse.
• "Just Wanna Rock" was cool when it dropped, now it's overplayed.
• Harder than any song on this album and any song I've heard in a while, "Fire Alarm" slaps.
• "CS" is overrated and Uzi did his thing on this song. The vocal performance was great. This song fits well into the overall theme of the album. I also don't want to underplay System of a Down's work on this song. The lyricism and overall arrangement of this song is amazing.
• "Werewolf" was a cool song. It didn't appeal to me. The only part of the song I enjoyed was Uzi's and they weren't nearly present enough in the overall song.
• "Pluto to Mars" sounds like a generic Uzi song. The snippet of this song was cool but I could have gone without this song ever being released.
• "Patience" kicks off the final chapter of this album. I love this song. The chorus is so catchy, the beat is amazing, and Don Toliver's vocals are the perfect backdrop. I love the bridge of this song. Uzi pulls off another perfect falsetto taking me right back to the No Luv Lost days. This is truly a gut-wrenching song.
• "Days Come and Go" is another heartfelt song. Honestly, it sounds like it would have fit right into the Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack. A very catchy song that's very fun to sing along to.
• I never thought I would hear this kind of storytelling from Uzi. On "Rehab" Uzi details his experience going through rehab and getting clean. It's a beautiful song. The detail alone is incredible. Also, it's lovely how they give credit to the people who helped him while they were in rehab. I think this is the most personal song I've ever heard from Uzi and It's the only time I've ever paid attention to the lyrics of an Uzi song.
• "The End" is honestly the perfect outro to the album. I love how the song constantly switches up styles. It reminds me of an anime outro which is the perfect conclusion to an Uzi album.

Uzi had me growling in my car singing along to this album. This is the first album I've ever gone out of my way to buy a physical copy of and I don't regret it. This is honestly my favorite body of music to come out this year and my favorite body of music in a while.

I held off on reviewing this album for a couple of weeks because I wanted to give myself time to live with it and enjoy it. In that time it has only further grown on me. This is a great project and although I don't do numerical ratings anymore, Pink Tape is a 10/10.

Favorite Songs

1. Fire Alarm
2. Crush Em
3. Suicide Doors
4. Endless Fashion
5. Patience

Gunna Wunna Dropped for the Summa

I'm going to say this right off the bat. I love Gunna's new album. I love how the production, especially in the first half, is more stripped-down and minimal than Gunna's typical style. This leave so much room for Gunna to shine through. And shine he does. He comes with flows and melodies that I've never heard from him.

Looking at the album as a whole

It seems to come out of a place of genuine pain. For some, this album is Gunna's telling his side of the story for the YSL RICO, but I think the greater narrative here is that Gunna feels alone, remorseful, and like he's been betrayed. the dark album cover showcases Gunna's side eye to the world. Normally we'd expect to see a tracklist full of collaborations with the people closest to him (Lil Baby, Young Thug, etc); here the tracklist is barren of features. Then there's the title of the album, a Gift & a Curse. It's very rare to hear someone describe their freedom as a "curse". One can only imagine how bittersweet that is.

I really want to talk about my favorite tracks on this album.

Track 1 - back at it

This beat is amazing. It's rare to hear Gunna truly rap over a beat rather than letting his voice harmonize and blend with a beat. The guitar in the background is beautiful. The way the bass keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole way through by never fully dropping is amazing. It builds this sense of tension for the rest of the album. I love Gunna's subtle experimentation with vocal effects. The flow in the chorus reminds me of his flow on "Speed it Up" and is almost nostalgic in a way. Lines like "And this is the thanks I get, tell me who wrong" are really impactful. Most rappers in Gunna's position would have a more defensive outlook toward the public. Gunna, in contrast, seems to feel more hurt and betrayed by the way people are treating him. Which is supported by a very sad and melancholic beat.

Track 2 - back to the moon

I love the way Gunna comes into this track. Using a (relatively) high-speed flow. The first words out of his mouth "If you don't like me, don't do what I do" perfectly set the tone. This song really shows Gunna's destain for the world around him

Track 5 - ca$h $hit
Track 6 - fukumean
Track 7 - rodeo dr

An incredible 3 track run for Gunna. Ca$h $hit is a really fun song with a good bounce and a great chorus. Fukumean is a strong contender for the best song on the album. The background vocals are wonderful and the overall melody of the song is highly infectious. The song is very laid back and still captivating. The transition from fukumean to rodeo dr is simply amazing. It's so good that at this point I can't hear one song without wanting to hear the other. Rodeo dr is a welcome elevation in energy. I can't listen to this song without nodding my head.

Track 9 - p angels

I love this track. I really really love this track. The ambiance in the beginning with the strings and the piano. Then there's the faint foliage in the background where you can hear birds chirping and the sounds of nature. To have all that immediately contrasted when the beat finally drops. The beautiful strings and piano are replaced by a hard-hitting 808 and the foliage is replaced by the faint sound of a smoke alarm with a dead battery. I have no idea whether or not that sound is intentional or not. That dead smoke alarm sound is persistent in the background of a few songs but it is extremely present in this one. I don't think Gunna is oblivious enough to not notice something like that. Regardless, it grew on me. The first time I heard it I immediately turned off the song because it bothered me so much, now I can't imagine the song without it. I feel like it adds something to the song and adds to that juxtaposition I described earlier. This song really is a great illustration of the title of the album, A Gift and a Curse.

Overall this was a really good album and definitely worth a listen.

This album has truly captivated me. The first time I ever heard Crystal Castles I was in middle school, playing Watch Dogs 2. I didn't realize who they were at the time but I enjoyed their music. That video game was one of my major inspirations to learn how to code and go into tech. Now that I'm older and actually working in tech, listening to this album takes me right back to those times of playing through every mission in the game. It is one of my favorite albums to listen to at work while I code, a true full-circle moment. Definitely worth a listen if you like electronic music or just want to hear something different.

Favorite Tracks

• Love and Caring
• Vanished
• Crimewave
• Alice Practice

There hasn’t been a good meme in a while.

Looking back on it the progression for If Looks Could Kill and its character Look Killa was insane. It all started with the Fashion Demon snippet going viral on TikTok. That snippet ended up getting released as a full song called If Looks Could Kill. That song ended up being the lead single off an album of the same title and that album spawned Destroy Lonely's character Look Killa. Part of me thinks this was all planned out especially since he did a very similar thing for his previous album No Stylist. It started with a song going viral on TikTok which turned into a full-length project. Still, I wonder how much influence Destroy Lonely actually has over this. I lived through the rollout of both projects and actively saw both songs go viral on TikTok. I can personally say that the growth of those songs seemed very organic and not like a massive label campaign which makes me doubt the theory of it being a deliberate attempt from a label. Another part of me thinks Destroy Lonely is taking a more reactive approach to things. Waiting for one of his songs to go viral and then releasing a body of work to accompany that single and take advantage of its virality. This could very well be said for No Stylist but it seems unlikely that he'd be able to film a short film, design a character, and build a universe in the time it took for If Looks Could Kill to go viral. Maybe it's just a coincidence that all this happened in perfect order but that seems just as unlikely. Regardless, No Stylist is a great album.

Anyone who has ever tried to do anything creative has likely experienced "creative block". Even writing this now is a struggle for me. I haven't felt like I had much to write about recently but I want to explore this topic. The first question we must answer is what it means to be creative and what is the job of an artist. In its simplest form creating art is merely taking one's experiences and influences and turning them into a tangible product. All artists do this, knowingly or not. All artists make things they desire to see outside of their heads. The things they desire to make are a direct result of their own personal experiences causing them to favor certain things. By examining the output of an artist we are able to get a greater picture of what life was like for that creator and what they were going through when they created their work. I think on some level all creators are aware of this. They know deep down that what they make reflects them and their life in some way. Even when they aren't making work that would be categorized as "serious" or "deep". People don't ever stop having experiences, people don't ever stop picking up new influences. But at some point, we don't know how to express these things and feel like we have nothing to express at all. Creative Block often times manifests itself as a lack of motivation but I think it's deeper than that. When someone experiences Creative Block it isn't because they don't know what to make, the answer is often right in their face. It's due to discomfort in wanting to share their experiences with the world. To bring this back to Kendrick Lamar, I think there's a lot we can learn from seeing his experience with Creative Block. There was a 5-year gap between Kendrick Lamars Damn and Mr. Moral and the Big Steppers. Obviously, Kendrick Lamar's life didn't stop in those 5 years. He was still learning and growing as a person so what prevented him from coming out with a new album sooner? For the first time since the early days of his career, he had to write about his present life. Every major release from Kendrick Lamar leading up to this album spoke about a past event in his life. While surely traumatic, the events Kendrick Lamar chooses to explore in his previous work are all topics he's already processed. He is able to see them clearly and make connections that he likely wouldn't have been able to make in the past. Mr. Moral and the Big Steppers was different, it explored issues that Kendrick Lamar was actively living through and will likely continue to live through for the rest of his life. Making such a large project about something so vulnerable where you know there will be millions of eyes examining every aspect of it is a tall task. Coming to the conclusion that the life in front of you is the story you have to tell is an even taller order, especially when everyone around you thinks you've made it. This likely caused a large sense of discomfort for Kendrick Lamar and lead him to believe he didn't have a story to tell. A great example of this is his leaked track Hooligans where he flat out says "I got something to say, which is nothing to say". Listening to the plethora of Kendrick Lamar leaks and demo tracks in between Damn and Mr. Moral and the Big Steppers might make you think he didn't know what direction to go in for his next project. You, the person reading this, might not know what direction to take for your next project. I can assure you, the answer is almost always right in front of you.

They need to make a version of munchies with no pretzels

This is a bug I'm all to familiar with. This is the second Linux machine of mine to experience it. To explain what happens is that sporadically my save file/ open file dialog box will stop appearing, completely blocking from uploading or saving any kind of file from the internet. I still don't know what causes the issue, especially since both times it cropped up after a fresh install. I hope at some point Canonical can fix this. Thank you to the random user on stack overflow who happened to have the solution after many minutes of Googling. If you're reading this and find value in what I'm talking about you should go upvote their solution. The solution is to just run the following command in your terminal sudo apt install xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/1438476/ubuntu-22-04-save-as-dialog-box-not-showing

First, I'd like to express my gratitude that he didn't label this a "deluxe". Although it's practically the same thing, it is refreshing to hear a new term. Of all of Tyler's albums, this one seems the most fitting to receive a deluxe version. The main album is about luxury and Tyler celebrating his success after his last smash-hit project. It's maximalist and decadent, two aspects that perfectly warrant a deluxe. My sincerest apologies for not reviewing Call Me If You Get Lost when it came out. Before entering the deluxe I want to speak about the main album. CMIYGL immediately enthralled me with its loud and confident rap production. Initially, songs like Juggernaut, Lemonhead, Hot Wind Blows, and Lumberjack had my attention in a chokehold. The rest of the album was largely lost on me until I decided to listen to the whole project. I love the production shift on this album from Igor. It is nice to hear Tyler rapping more. There were a couple of dull moments on this album. Specifically tracks 11 through 13 didn't move me much along with a couple of other tracks across the project. Overall though I'd say it was an excellent project, I couldn't think of a better follow-up to Igor. The deluxe was truly great. It was the perfect send-off for this era of Tyler. It had all of the braggadocious bars and heartfelt moments of CMIYGL while at the same time feeling like a sincere goodbye from this era of Tyler. I still wonder why Tyler chose to keep some of these songs off of the main album. To be completely honest there isn't a single skip in the deluxe. I do feel like we could have gotten a more substantial performance from A$AP Rocky on Warf Talk. I also would have loved to hear Kanye on Heaven to Me. I can't wait to see what direction Tyler goes next. Favorite songs The main album Sir Baudelaire - I love Michael Irvin by Westside Gunn. When I heard that beat as the intro to the album it was a great surprise. Shout out to my air fryer Hot Wind Blows - I love this Lil Wayne verse. This beat sounds like fresh linen Sweet / I thought you wanted to dance Juggernaut - I love the Lil Uzi verse and the Pharrell verse The Deluxe Stuntman - Really fun song Dogtooth - Funner song Heaven to me - The production on this song is amazing. Like "What a Day" but better. I love the storytelling in this song. Sorry not sorry - Just a great ending Songs I really liked at one point but had to stop listening to Wasyaname Runitup Lumberjack Lemonhead